


Gestalt

by Slyboots



Series: Partners [3]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Alien Biology, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Class Issues, Dark, Drama & Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other: See Story Notes, Pre-Canon, Psychological Trauma, Slow Build, War, can be standalone
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:27:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21905983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slyboots/pseuds/Slyboots
Summary: “Shockwave’s got a lot to answer for.”After a brutal defeat, the Stunticons cling to life in the Skyquake Pre-Memorial Hospital.
Relationships: Breakdown/Knock Out
Series: Partners [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1577944
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	1. Burn the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the continuity of Encrypted Communications, some years after Chapter 3 (Kaon).
> 
> Primarily Transformers: Prime-compliant, with some nods to other continuities (e.g., Blitzwing owes something to his Animated self, Shockwave is mostly Aligned with some IDW influence, and Dead End is toy-based).

“--another shipment of medics from Vos--”   


Breakdown’s processor hummed. The medbay splintered into shards of light, stabbing his optics; his vocal synthesizer caught, hissing and spitting, as he groaned. The acrid stink of Energon coated his mouth.   


His HUD juddered, filling with snow.   


He’d lost a limb, an eye, a fuel tank--his mind screamed of  _ absence _ , of  _ void _ \--   


The medbay teetered precipitously around him. He ought to be taller, heavier, dwarfing the cool slab. He ought to be hot with rage--   


Breakdown twitched. For an instant he felt  _ suspended _ , as if looking down on himself from a tremendous height--   


“Easy, chief.” The ping came in distorted, buzzing. The second ping was closer; a klik later something cool trickled over his searing chassis. “Easy. I’m right beside you.” His HUD cleared for an instant.  _ Specialist Pitstop. _ The third ping came in clear.  _ Medic. Decepticon. _   


“--all going to offline.” A flat voice, somewhere close by. Too flat. A processor injury, then, or poisoning-- “All scrap. All scrap. All hands lost--”

With a jolt Breakdown realized it was Dead End.

Somewhere in the medbay Wildrider was screaming, cursing--

Breakdown’s processor reeled. Again and again his diagnostic scans washed over his frame, searching for the absence that nagged at him like a lost denta. His optics were online, registering only screeching, impossible light--he’d been blinded, or--   


“You’re intact,” said Pitstop, pinging again. “The others weren’t so lucky.”

“Intact, huh?” He found his voice, his synthesizer burning. “Doesn’t feel like it.”   


Pitstop vented, his laugh weak. “Menasor separated involuntarily. We think it should wear off. Probably.”

“Slag,” muttered Breakdown. His memory banks were molten-hot, a confused trickle of screams and staticky pain-- _ fiber optic _ pain. Pitstop’s fingers brushed his shoulder, a panel scraping open. “Hey--slaggit, don’t--”

Again Wildrider screamed. There were words in it now--

\--but Breakdown’s processor cut them out as cleanly as an edited tape. He was slipping in and out of reality, his optics online and unseeing. Something icy pricked deep, sinking into an exposed fuel line. A hot draft whipped over his open shoulder panel.

The world spun like an out-of-control troop carrier.

“--all slag,” said Dead End in an empty monotone. “All scrap--”

“Get your filthy hands offa me--” Breakdown tried, but his arms were slack, his pistons still, his hydraulics limp as fat worms, and Pitstop was stroking his shoulder in a mute apology--

“--more medics,” said someone, and Breakdown slipped into darkness.

_ They burned the sky _ . It ran through Knock Out’s processor like a nonsensical prayer.  _ They burned the sky _ \--

The transport flew low, crawling past half-dug trenches, past gutted Energon mines. Even the topsoil had been processed by now, for what Energon dust remained, and lifeless silicon-clay weathered, exposed, dark as leaked oil.

It was 0400 in Vos, Knock Out’s HUD told him. It might have been night or day. The crimson Kaonian sky throbbed, hazy with smoke. Too bright to power down--Primus knew he’d tried, dozens of times, and yet the other doctors were snoring almost peacefully in their bunks. Drugged, more than likely.

Stacked like bricks, he thought, and stifled a snicker. A cargo of medics, ready for delivery.

“So what’s become of Kaon, Astrotrain? Still the hottest vacation destination in the--oh, my bad, that’s Polyhex.  _ Was _ Polyhex.”

Above him, Splint murmured in his sleep, his wings scraping the wall. Astrotrain kept his silence, though Knock Out fancied the temperature crept upward. 

He’d go mad, he supposed, if he stopped cracking jokes. “Kaon’s always been a slagheap. Looks like Big M’s renovating. Not what I’d have done with the old place.”

The city sprawled below, glittering with the pinprick biolights of Decepticon squads in formation. Seekers swooped round them, weaving in and out of jets of rising steam, their shouts crackling on Astrotrain’s commlink. Squadrons of hunter-seeker skyships lifted from the plateau in eerie unison, their engines soundless. 

_ They burned the sky-- _

The last of Dreadnought Memorial Hospital’s staff disembarked, grumbling and rubbing their optics, onto the Kaonian plateau. Less than two dozen functioning, where there’d been hundreds--

Their escorts--Runabout on the left, someone had said, Runamuck on the right--glared with imbecilic malice. Knock Out smiled brightly back. “Doctor  _ in the house _ .”

_ Keep smiling, keep quipping, keep your sanity by any means necessary-- _

He would  _ not _ bow his head, would not play the hostage. Not to these goons.

“Doc Knock Out? Word of friendly advice?” In robot mode Astrotrain was streaked with soot, glistening with condensed smog. “Learn to keep your yap shut.”

He sat in the shared washracks, cold solvent trickling over his chassis, as the hours ticked away. Of late he’d developed insomniac tendencies.

Through the thin curtain his bunkmates muttered, sobbed, laughed high and glassy. Splint’s wings shook with his silent gasps. (He’d been an aerodynamics surgeon too, poor sap.)

Over and over he pinged Breakdown’s frequency.

_ Of course. The solar cycle they ship me off to Kaon, the big lug gets himself blown up _ .

A smuggled flask of engex went round. Splint was squiffy already, his laugh hysterical; the third time the engex was offered, Knock Out waved it away. “Watching my weight, thanks. I’m going back to the track when all this blows over.”

“We’re going to  _ die _ here,” murmured Amput-8, but after that they left him alone. The silence was almost worse.

And still Breakdown didn’t respond.

Knock Out was too familiar with corpses. The image in his processor came easily, unbidden.

_ Keep your dignity _ \--

“Nice accommodations. Not even an Energon goodie on the pillows. I call that barbarity.”

“Shut up, Knock Out.”

He floated strutless on a wave of warm light. His head breached the surface; blind and content as a protoform he bobbed. Impossibly far away, someone was talking.

“We were lucky.”

“ _ He _ was lucky.”

“These combiners ain’t exactly factory-standard. Wiring looks like a flock of Scraplets ate it, shat it out, and put it back together. Enigma of Combination, my boron compressor.”

“Shockwave’s got a lot to answer for.”

Breakdown heard but did not listen.

“He’s gonna be in a world of pain when we disconnect the drip.”

The sunlight poured into his seams, flowed like warm oil through him.

“Best thing you can do for some of these guys is keep ‘em doped. Pain like that, it’s in the processor, not the fiber optics.”

“So what’s the verdict, Doc? Menasor gonna be salvaged?”

A laugh as bitter as spilled oil, as ruptured fuel lines. Darkness leaked into his HUD for an instant--

The light swept round him, eddying, carrying him down.

“Shockwave wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The first few solar cycles in Kaon passed in a nauseous blur: security clearances, oaths of allegiance, warrens of bombed-out tunnels, broken pipes belching reeking steam, always the grim-faced escorts--

Runabout cracked jokes--technically they were jokes--as he hustled them from barracks to training camp to medbay. Runamuck’s laugh lodged firmly in Knock Out’s processor.

They’d lost the last medical dispatch to an Autobot artillery fusillade, Runabout explained one morning (was it morning?). “Didn’t even give ‘em time to surrender. Kaboom.” Runabout snapped his fingers, cackling. “Ob _ -lit _ -erated.”

Splint faltered, his wings drooping, and Amput-8 buried an elbow firmly in his side panel.

And then they were off, Amput-8 and the rest of them to the trauma bay, Splint and Knock Out down reeking tunnels and up hydraulic elevators. From Runamuck they were handed to Blitzwing, and off they went again, past keycodes and security checkpoints, until Knock Out was half convinced Blitzwing was trying to disorient him.

“Blitzwing--”

“Silence, Doctor.” The accent wasn’t Kaonian. He’d been freshly reforged, crudely, his seams still spotted with new paint. Underneath he’d been a Seeker, perhaps.

Knock Out’s servos itched to scrape away the spilled paint, to dig into Blitzwing’s brutalized wiring.

“Sorry, my bad.  _ Hauptmann _ Blitzwing. Who did your reformatting? It’s--unique.”

“That is a personal question.” Blitzwing tapped in a keycode. They shot upward, Knock Out’s fuel tank roiling, Splint whimpering and staring from the window (yearning to fly, Knock Out guessed). “But as your interest is professional--”

“Absolutely.”

“It was done here, at the Skyquake Pre-Memorial Hospital. The Research Division.”

“Lovely,” muttered Knock Out. “They need us more than I thought.”

The first few solar cycles passed in a howl of pain. He was observed constantly, his vitals flashing on staticky holoscreens in a shorthand he’d never learned. As his motor roared, belching smoke, something icy trickled into his fuel lines and the agony lessened.

“Don’t want it,” he tried, his synthesizer aching. “Making me stupid. Vulnerable.”

They feared him, he supposed He was strapped down, hand and foot. More often than not they called him “Menasor-5,” or “the Stunticon,” or “the patient”--the names changed as often as the nurses. He did not see Pitstop again, and the new medics’ names he never learned.

So the solar cycles crawled slow as oil over glass, and Breakdown floated in his own mind, itching for solitude, for privacy, but itching more to be  _ useful _ .

“Hey--” he tried as a masked femme fed an Energon drip into his fuel line. “What’s your designation? Where’s my squad?”

“Designation: irrelevant. Menasor: decommissioned.”

That stirred him from the sleepy haze. “What d’you mean,  _ decommissioned _ ?”

“Classified.”

Breakdown shuddered, and the needle twitched in his fuel line. The anesthetic dulled his reactions, kept him toothless and tame. Yet he’d have been furious,  _ was _ furious: he felt it, numb and distant, around the edges. “I’m rusting in here while you all pull my guts apart. How about you tell me what’s going on?”

The femme withdrew. But perhaps they’d deemed him back to his senses: the next nurse told him a little more, and the next a little more.

So by degrees he pieced it together. 

He was  _ Sergeant _ Breakdown, acting commander of the Stunticon unit--

\--all two of them.


	2. Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The assembly lines are coming. The surgeries can and will be automated. Combiners are the future of the war.”

There was always a shortage of doctors.

They’d rallied around the Senate, the well-paid and well-heeled surgeons of Iacon. The humble sawbones, the embittered military medic, they’d gone Decepticon out of class solidarity or idealism--and been blown to scrap by Sentinel Prime’s bombers. Poor lightly-armored things.

The Dreadnought Memorial Hospital had declared itself Neutral, along with the rest of Vos. For all the good it had done them, they might’ve erected a “please don’t bomb us!” sign. Knock Out had suggested that, in the last days of Vosian independence. Caduceus hadn’t liked that--

\--but Caduceus had been crushed by rubble when Tarn’s bombers had come,  _ inevitably _ they’d come, and Knock Out had slit his fuel line. It’d been a mercy.

It’d been easier than he’d expected.

“Shockwave.” The  _ Doctor _ occurred to his processor, died on his lips. “You wanted a second opinion?”

“The procedure is principally surgical.” Shockwave scarcely looked up. The gutted thing twitched on the table, wires glistening. “It was logical to train a surgeon, not a biologist. Your name was recommended.”

_ Not much of an answer _ . “Of course.” Knock Out vented softly, his wheels settling in their wells, some part of him preening a little. “You’re giving a Triple Changer his wings, then? I’ve done plenty of body work on Seekers. Bit of a specialist. Or--”

“No. Observe.”

At Knock Out’s shoulder, Blitzwing saluted and retired. He’d dropped off Splint in the cloning facility; now Knock Out stood alone in a glistening medbay. All around him holos flashed up, screens trilling for attention. How Shockwave stood it--

Untroubled, Shockwave reached into the nest of wires. “The laser core extraction is simple. The processor continues to function.”

Red and black plating lay scattered across the surgical table. The body had been pulled apart at the joints, split open like a shed Insecticon husk. Inelegant work--but efficient. Knock Out smelled dried Energon, shed oil. Several solar cycles old, by the taste of it, the most volatile hydrocarbons long escaped. But there was something  _ familiar _ in the chemical signature, and something nauseous and acrid, something so strong Knock Out almost gagged--

“Anesthetized?” He stepped forward.

“An unnecessary precaution. The efferent fiber optics are incapable of transmitting motor signals.” Charge crackled across the mech’s wiring. His faceplate had been peeled away, discarded. Beneath it his processor pulsed spasmodically, clicking to no rhythm Knock Out recognized. “He will not move during the procedure.”

Knock Out had seen battlefield surgery, had broken more than a few lost causes up for parts. As a medical student he’d have retched at the stink, at the raw brutality of it, at the absurdity, this butchery done in the most advanced medbay in Kaon--but how quickly disgust gave way to curiosity. “There’s something I don’t recognize in his system.”

Shockwave pulled free a tangle of red wires. “Dark Energon. The poisoning destroyed much of his neural network. His fuel tanks have already been drained to avoid contamination.”

Knock Out scrubbed in, spraying his buzzsaw down with disinfectant and closing down his vents. “But we’re taking out the Spark? Pardon me, but If the processor’s shot--”

“The procedure has been done successfully at Ankmor, using Mini-Cons. The success rate with Macromasters is unknown. This one is expendable.” Shockwave’s voice was as unreadable as his expression. 

Knock Out had seen  _ empurata _ on his clinic rotations in Iacon, had shaken the hands of Cybertron’s greatest specialists. The success rate at their clinics had been astounding: close to ninety percent survival.

Yet even those lucky survivors had borne scars. Some had fiber optic damage, and stuttered or twitched; others never regained the use of one hand (such as it was). Shockwave’s must have been done in this backwater, by surgeons barely worthy of the name--Shockwave had been surgeon to the gladiatorial corps, Knock Out remembered dimly--yet so smoothly did he move, so elegantly his one eye sat in what had been a face--

Knock Out stole a glimpse at Shockwave’s hands. Two surgeries at least, the first to destroy, the second to replace. The one grueling, the second no doubt unlicensed. Yet his hands, with all their grace and luster, might’ve been original.

Yes, perhaps there were real surgeons in Kaon.

If Shockwave noticed, he gave no sign. “Remove the braincase as if for reformatting. We will extract the processor next.”

Knock Out’s buzzsaw whirred.

And it was a relief, really, to work in a real operating theater again, with a real colleague, with no Blitzwing or Runamuck breathing down his grille, no gun barrel at his back--

Shockwave  _ deserved _ his position. He’d never imagined that.

“His wiring’s nonstandard. Has he been a guinea pigatron before?”

As he’d expected, Shockwave didn’t laugh, didn’t take umbrage. “Yes. He was retrofitted as a gestalt component. An early prototype, rewired manually.”

Knock Out sliced away bundles of wire, pinching off hydraulic lines. “ _ Brutal _ .”

“Merely inefficient.” It was not quite a rebuke. “The assembly lines are coming. The surgeries can and will be automated. Combiners are the future of the war.”

Knock Out shuddered, imagining. The mech’s fuel tanks were replacements, welded to his spinal struts, his fuel lines looping round the combiner port occupying much of his chest. He must’ve clogged regularly, must’ve been in pain--

Genius, to be sure. You had to admire the audacity of the Kaonian surgeons.

And wonder, privately, about the survival rate. For every Shockwave, perhaps, a crudely-reforged Blitzwing, a mangled combiner--

“I hear they’re building them in Iacon.  _ Superion _ something--”

Shockwave waved it off. “I changed the way war is waged on Cybertron.” He said it tonelessly, a mere statement of fact--and the more arrogant for it. “Cut out the spark chamber housing.”

The exo-walker pinched around his breastplate.

“I can walk,” growled Breakdown. All optics were on him again; he was ringed by chittering nurses, their faceplates identical masks of concern and curiosity. Clones, he’d gathered. “Robot mode. Truck mode. Whichever. I can get myself there. Just say the word.”

“Please, Sergeant, do me a favor and don’t transform until you’re cleared for it.” Sawbones rubbed his optics. “I don’t need to reassemble you.”

“Yeah, well, last thing I need is to be a laughingstock.” Breakdown straightened. Winced as sickening pain arced through his cables. Still he searched, for a klik, for Wildrider to stabilize him ( _ them).  _ “Get me outta this thing. That’s an  _ order _ .”

“Strictly, we’re not in your chain of command. And you know that, too.” Sawbones straightened too, his crest barely level with Breakdown’s shoulder. A solid photon missile hit would’ve pulverized him, broken him as Dead End and Wildrider had been broken-- “Sorry, Sergeant. You wanted to see Motormaster. It’s this or a gurney.”

\--barely able to walk, too weak to transform, and yet he was  _ intact, _ while his brothers in arms were shattered--

“Slag--” snapped Breakdown, hands curling into fists (one tighter than the other, his fiber optics engaging too little and too late), and the nurses drew back as one. 

In their glassy faceplates he saw himself: burly as Motormaster, ravaged with battle scars, faceplate contorted with killing rage--

Chastened, he muted his synthesizer. Vented hard, to Sawbones’s visible consternation.

“Right. Let’s get this over with.”

They passed Dead End’s and Wildrider’s berths. They’d been transferred the solar cycle before--

“Transferred to level -1,” Sawbones muttered.

The exo-walker held Breakdown fast--yet he longed to lean down, to snarl, “ _ Bit of medical humor, huh? Transferred to the Well?” _ His mind thrashed, pinned like a boltfly on a needle--

But there was no time to mourn, to think. Breakdown swallowed it down, consigned it to memory.

Sawbones merely raised an eyebrow.

  
  


Breakdown’s optics struggled to adjust; his processor ached. He’d not, perhaps, been ready to leave his berth.

The Cryogenic Regeneration unit was near-pitch black, lit by the phosphorescent glow of the tanks, the gleam of the nurses’ optics. Here alone in the hospital, the chill pervaded the air. Condensation dripped from Breakdown’s faceplate, spattering the exo-walker; his exhaust clouded Motormaster’s tank.

He squinted, longing for a hand to shield his optics.

Motormaster floated, impossibly weightless, in a gel dark with nanites. As Breakdown watched they tunneled through the gel, too small to see individually; one klik the gel refracted light, absorbing it the next.

He’d been ripped apart, his plating crazed like glass. The missile had melted his face; it’d run like liquid solder, bubbling as it cooled.

_ You--Menasor--took two photon missiles head-on _ , Sawbones had explained.  _ Anyone smaller would’ve been melted outright. _

Light Breakdown remembered now, and heat, heat enough to blacken paint and fry circuits, heat enough to melt a mech alive. But the details were lost to him, though he’d had ample time to offline his circuits and think.  _ Memory loss. Encoding failure. Or the physical failure of a memory bank. Not uncommon after neural net trauma. We’ll have a mnemosurgeon down to look at you-- _

Motormaster bobbed gently in the gel, his deformed grin swimming in and out of sight. His optics had burst, two raw holes staring at Breakdown.

Corpses he’d seen aplenty. In the mines of Velocitron, in the slums of Delta, on decontamination jobs in Kaon--Breakdown was no stranger to corpses. But to know that Motormaster’s processor still functioned--

\--to know that this hunk of mangled metal had been  _ part _ of them (him)--

Again he felt curiously doubled, as if his mind were situated behind Motormaster’s melted optic-sockets, as if he stared back endlessly at himself, his gaze reflected and reflected again.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ve seen enough.”

They released him from the exo-walker before the mnemosurgeon arrived: a small mercy. He ached, strut-deep; whether the ache was fatigue, or some shadow of the electric pain that raced through him still as he moved, he could not say.

“Wiggle your servos. I want to see your range of movement.” The mnemosurgeon entered without knocking, with no friendly ping. Breakdown complied with a dull grunt. “Left hand. Right hand. Good.”

His chest cavity clicked open, disgorging a deployer. Breakdown squinted, drawing in on himself. This was new.

He’d seen disposables before, of course, by the millions--

\--but in Kaon he’d assumed medical-class disposables largely extinct. Exterminated, perhaps, the victims of Kaon’s endless social turmoil. Though truth be told, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen any doctor save Knock Out--

Without preamble the deployer transformed, so tiny its whirr was barely audible. The mnemosurgeon picked it up, gently enough. “Follow Polarizer with your optics.”

Breakdown felt his optics flagging, wandering off course. The laser pointer’s beam seemed absurdly tiny, and already his optics ached.

Yet the mnemosurgeon didn’t chastise him. “Stick out your glossa. Okay. Now put both hands on the table. When I tap your hand, you tap the table with the  _ opposite _ hand. Understood?”

He did.

“All right. Let’s begin.” 

On this, too, he fumbled--his hands felt unfamiliar, as if some of his neural net’s signals were draining away into his frame and dissipating there. Twice he tapped with the wrong hand. Once he didn’t tap at all. 

“Okay,” said the mnemosurgeon. “Now tell me your designation, your taxonomic number and alt-mode, and today’s stardate.”

“Breakdown of Velocitron.” He squirmed under the surgeon’s gaze. “Alt-mode armored truck, taxonomic number 27. Military caste,” he added, to show willing. “Stardate is--slag--”

His HUD was snowed again.

Polarizer transformed back with a tiny click. “Take your time.” Its--no,  _ his _ voice was oddly resonant for such a tiny mech.

Breakdown vented. “Don’t know. Sorry.” Their gazes bored into his plating; Breakdown felt his faceplate heat. “I’ve been in here for solar cycles. Couldn’t tell you how many. I get it, I look like a big military lunk--”

“That’s all right, Breakdown.” The mnemosurgeon made a note on a datapad. “Well, you’ve clearly got a neural net injury. I don’t want to speculate, mind you--but Shockwave predicted something like this might happen--”

The heat drained from his faceplate. How had he not noticed the chill in the examining room? “Processor damage.”

“Probably temporary,” said Polarizer. “Your memory’s coming back, isn’t it?”

“Only a little--”

“The memory banks activated when you were Menasor were dumped when you lost consciousness.” The mnemosurgeon’s voice was kind. “Some data were corrupted around the time of the--accident, let’s call it. I don’t see evidence for any structural damage to your memory chip.”

Breakdown’s lips moved. All at once he thought,  _ Knock Out would understand this _ ,  _ I need Knock Out with me _ , and  _ the malfunction’s talking down to me _ \--

_ When you were Menasor _ . It replayed in his processor. That, at least, made sense.

“When I saw Motormaster,” he blurted. “My commander. I thought for a klik I  _ was _ Motormaster--”

“The central component.” The mnemosurgeon nodded. “Your motor areas are intact, as far as that goes. But they’re trying to send signal through your combiner port. You’re trying to move limbs you don’t have.”

Breakdown’s hand moved, a klik too slow, to his abdomen. His plating had never quite sat right there, not since the surgery--

“So what? I just gotta live with it? I’m just broken, that it?”

Knock Out would’ve had a snappy reply, would’ve punctured the mnemosurgeon’s sappy insincerity, would’ve laughed at the very idea that his conjunx was  _ broken _ \--

But Knock Out wasn’t there. Hadn’t been there for centuries. Breakdown sat by himself, looming over the table, in a sterile and quiet room so far from the battlefield, where the air recirculated with a dull hum, where his world was falling apart--

“We’ll recommend you for rehabilitation,” said Polarizer gently. Breakdown was seized with the urge to scoop him up, to dash him against the table. “There isn’t a lot of precedent on combiner neurology. You could get everything back, or you could plateau where you are.”

“Shockwave will want a more extensive examination,” said the mnemosurgeon, steepling his fingers. “We’ll have to take your plating off for that.”

“The Pit you will.” He felt his temper slipping away. Breakdown let it slip. “You don’t get to do this to me. I’ve been a loyal Decepticon--”

“No one’s  _ doing _ anything to you, Breakdown.” Polarizer backed away on the table.  _ Good. Let the little glitch run _ . “I know you’re upset--”

“Explosive anger,” remarked the mnemosurgeon. “Not an uncommon feature of neural net damage.”

Breakdown stood, knocking the table aside. Snatched for Polarizer. His hand made it halfway and froze in midair; he’d expected it to drop limp and numb, or to spasm, but it hung stiff and sensate, his fiber optics prickling.

“There--see?” Polarizer paused in his retreat. With bravery Breakdown admired--grudgingly--he strode across the table, reaching for a hand that dwarfed him. “You should be feeling some tingling in your port now.”

With his good hand Breakdown reached again for his shielded port. And indeed it crackled with static, prickling his finger--

“Polarizer,” said the surgeon gently. “Polarizer, the exam’s over. He’s done.”

“That is  _ weird _ ,” mumbled Breakdown, settling back into the chair with a grunt. “That is so  _ weird _ .” And then, as Polarizer pressed on his fingertip, “Uh. Sorry.”

Polarizer shrugged. “We’ll be seeing each other again. I find it best not to take it personally.”

“It was personal.” With a click Breakdown’s arm engaged. Startled, he let it drop to the tabletop, knocking Polarizer aside. “I need a cycle.”

He’d intended to leave it there, to keep some dignity. Yet as Polarizer nodded and clambered onto the surgeon’s shoulder, Breakdown blurted, “I’m not going back onto the field, am I? Menasor’s finished.”

“We’ll see,” said the surgeon, almost kindly. “You have given  _ everything _ for the Decepticon cause, Breakdown. Your loyalty will be justly rewarded when the war’s over.”

No, he wanted to say,  _ no, I still function, my engine still works, my back is strong--there’s so much more I got in me, so much more I coulda lost-- _

But the door shut behind them.

The laser core hissed, its lights sputtering off, as Knock Out plunged it into the coolant bath. A Spark the color of obsidian danced, frantic, at its center. “You’ll have to forgive me, Shockwave. I’m not exactly a combiner enthusiast.”

“State your meaning.” Slow and methodical, Shockwave separated the mech’s components for recycling. The plates dropped into one bin, the wires into another.

_ A Velocitronian funeral: smelting. Cute _ . But no, the mech hadn’t been Velocitronian. There were few Velocitronians on Cybertron these days, and that nimble wiring he’d have recognized instantly.

Still, something about the chemical profile of his Energon, under the foul tang of the Dark Energon, was oddly familiar--

“Who  _ was _ this poor sap? There’s something about him.” The silence yawned. Knock Out forced a lazy smile. “We might’ve dated once.”

“Your question is irrelevant.” Shockwave half-turned, the force of his glare making Knock Out blink. After what felt like cycles, he added, “But for the sake of unity, I will humor you.”

Knock Out paused in the act of stowing the coolant tank, the Spark battering at the core’s sides. Its light splintered, refracted, casting odd stained-glass tints over Knock Out’s chassis.

“The specimen was the Stunticon designated Dead End.”

Knock Out could do nothing but stare. He was falling, falling into darkness, his audials roaring, and why hadn’t the world ended, why was Shockwave still  _ speaking _ \--

“Your conjunx endura served alongside Dead End. Their Energon mingled during combination.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shockwave references the BotCon script Unreliable Narratives.


	3. Rehabilitation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "For the Decepticon cause, Polarizer had said with an apologetic shrug. For the Decepticon cause Breakdown could tolerate just about anything, with dentae gritted."
> 
> Breakdown undergoes indignities. Knock Out wrestles with what's left of his conscience.

“You pulled up my personal information, you sly turbofox.”

Knock Out’s synthesizer hummed, his faceplate smiled abashedly, yet Knock Out’s mind was screaming, screaming--

“It was only logical.” For an instant he hated Shockwave. “You are here involuntarily. Your home colony is avowedly Neutral. Your city of residence was Neutral until its fall. You resided in Iacon for some time.” Shockwave dusted chips of Dead End’s paint from the table. How simple, how humane a gesture, how easy to despise-- “This surgery is controversial even among Decepticons.”

“Can’t imagine why,” said Knock Out weakly. “It is ugly.”

“Records from your residency interviews indicated you were talented, self-absorbed, and amoral. You received multiple complaints in your first five vorns of residency.” Shockwave continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Your resistance to the Decepticon occupation of Vos was weak. I deemed you an ideal candidate.”

Breakdown poisoned by Dark Energon, eaten away from the inside out, offlined by whatever had mutilated Dead End--The images replayed in Knock Out’s neural net. How easy, after dissecting Dead End, to see Breakdown’s wires corroding, to see his optics ripped out, his warm smile stained with spilled Energon--Breakdown stripped for parts--how easy to imagine Shockwave sweeping his sweet  _ sentio metallico _ into a bin for recycling--

“Your conjunx endura is loyal to a fault.” And the injustice of it, that Shockwave was talking still. “It was concluded that his well-being would keep you loyal if your own curiosity did not.”

_ Is _ , not  _ was _ .

“Well.” It was an effort to slow his thoughts, to bring them in line with his synthesizer. “Honestly. I’d have done it for science.”

“So I concluded, in the end.” Shockwave’s eye fixed him, its reflection screeching off his headlights. “You still will. To satisfy your curiosity, and for a comfortable existence.”

“Please stop talking.” The shock flushed through him, chilly in his fuel lines. “I might feel guilty.”

But Breakdown was alive--

\--though in what form, he knew not--

“Decontaminate yourself before you leave.” Shockwave indicated a washrack. “Say nothing of this. Dead End’s acquaintances may find it--aesthetically displeasing.”

The threat was implicit in it. Knock Out had, after all, to admire the sheer audacity.

“Shockwave’s  _ empurata _ ,” he remarked to Blitzwing as they descended, passing a flock of Seekers in dark formation against the sky. “That’s some  _ beautiful _ work. Any chance the surgeon’s still around? Nothing like a little healthy competition."

Blitzwing’s face tensed--and rearranged, panels sliding aside with a squeak. Knock Out watched with morbid fascination.

“You ask a lot of questions, don’t you? You begin to annoy me, little gear stripper--”

“Please.” He feigned outrage. “Call me a butcher or a monster.  _ Gear stripper  _ is so pedestrian.”

The more terrified he was, the more he talked. A wit as sparkling as his finish, and as armored--

You compartmentalized quickly, or you died.

Five times he pinged Breakdown on the walk back to the trauma bay. Five times, though Breakdown had always liked his solitude--

No response. The pings sat in his outbox, unacknowledged.

_ Breakdown stripped down to the protoform--Breakdown rotting away in a CR chamber _ \--

“I love you,” he appended to the last ping. And when that went unacknowledged, after a joor, he deleted all five--half out of pique, half to push the thought of Breakdown aside.

He swam in and out of colorless playback. Someone was pinging him--he must’ve been powered on, then--

\--and Knock Out lay in his arms, stroking his chassis, whispering, “ _ Just a few more kliks _ .” His audials twitched. Breakdown chuckled, nibbled their points, nuzzled Knock Out’s neck cables. His jaw ached, as if the metal had been eaten away by acid--

“C’mon. Get up. Go to the clinic.” The Iaconian sun trickled up their habsuite’s wall. Engines roared in the bowels of the hospital; Knock Out’s engine purred, warm and comfortable. He smelled of Energon and disinfectant. Breakdown’s tanks turned over. “Lemme recharge.”

Though real recharge escaped him. 

“I didn’t go to medical school to spend all solar cycle in some dingy  _ hospital _ .” Knock Out’s fingertip traced a seam between panels. “What’s one student more or less? They’ll never notice.”

The panel slid open with a pop. A needle pricked deep. He tried to roll over, but Knock Out’s weight pinned him to the berth--

“Knock Out. Shaddup. Go to the clinic. Lemme recharge.” 

Sawbones was in the habsuite with them, a diagnostic scanner glowing in his hand.  _ Little privacy here? _ he thought, annoyance flaring for a klik, and remembered--

\--Knock Out stirred in his arms, Knock Out who for the past nine vorns had been six solar cycles’ drive away in Vos. Knock Out who might have been only a bittersweet memory--

_ \--memory impairment-- _

“Party pooper,” muttered Knock Out, who wasn’t there. The morning sunlight glowed hazy on his finish. He smelled clean, freshly painted and polished. Nothing in Kaon ever smelled so clean. “All right, all right, I’m going.”

_ No--no, don’t-- _

And then it was another solar cycle, and he was powered on again.

“You’re not recharging well.” Polarizer ran a diminutive finger down the datapad. “You need your strength back.”

“Kinda hard to power down in here.” Breakdown grunted. 

Polarizer fixed him with clear red optics.

Breakdown pulled away. “Not complaining. I’d rather be here than melted down with Wildrider.” It felt odd, to say it aloud. “Sorry, is it  _ Dr.  _ Polarizer?”

It wasn’t. He felt stupid then, for asking. Of course no disposable would’ve been to medical school.

Polarizer nodded, as if unbothered. “Now, Dr. Sawbones’s best predictions have you on your feet about a quartex from now. The top brass would like that timeline--” He tasted the word almost delicately. “Accelerated.”

“Fine by me.” This time they’d let him take the exo-walker through a disused tunnel to the examination room, avoiding gawkers. Still his mesh ached where the walker had bit deep. “Rather be out there, bending fenders, than in here getting soft and lazy.” It was almost a plea. “I don’t need my neural net to fight.”

Though they both knew it was a lie. Mercifully, Polarizer looked away; Breakdown hated him for an instant, for the pity, and in turn resented himself for hating the little mech. Polarizer was as much a tool as he was--

Polarizer was oblivious, or feigned it well. “I’ll spare you the numbers and the medical jargon. Lord Megatron wants an all-out assault on Nova Cronum by the end of the stellar cycle. With or without Menasor. Preferably with.”

It took him a klik to process it. They were close to the cloning wing; he scented fresh protoform, his chemical sensors buzzing. “Hang on. I thought Menasor was scrapped. Half the squad got slagged--”

“Was he?” said Polarizer. From that tone--dryly puzzled, one Knock Out had so often aimed for and so often missed--Breakdown knew the subject was closed.

He mourned, in his waking joors. He had time aplenty to mourn, and little else to do.

They’d been his friends, his brothers in arms. He’d loathed them.

The probe sparked, blue charge arcing between nodes. Breakdown clenched his jaw, muting his yell.

“You should feel that in your left hand.” Polarizer glanced up from a datapad that dwarfed him. “Bit of a tingle--”

“That’s nothing.” He’d felt it, a corrosive prickle washing over his frame. Vividly he felt his left arm clench, pistons engaging; with his optics offlined it’d have fooled him, though his arm hung limp and useless by his side. “We’re on a tight time frame. Gimme the next step up.”

The rehabilitation bay was scarcely large enough for Breakdown, and the abandoned exo-walker loomed over them all. He hung suspended by luminescent cables, spread-eagled, nauseatingly vulnerable, with probes and sensors snaking into his exposed ports. Its plate pulled back, his combiner port whirred, shedding heat. 

There were no pain receptors, Polarizer said, in his combiner port. It’d been built from his original engine block, the crippled one, and never meant to see daylight. How strange, how sick, to see its biolights reflected on the concrete--

The faceless nurse slid a probe into its depths, and--though Polarizer had been honest, and the port was so numb it might not have been  _ him _ at all--Breakdown snarled with shock.

He’d tried to cooperate, though his limbs had stalled and his HUD had juddered. Without success he’d strained to lift his bulk from the exo-walker (until the nurses engaged the hydraulic lift--against the other humiliations it barely registered). He’d acquiesced to the sensors studding his mesh like parasites. A probe had gone inside his mouth, another into his interface jack. All this he’d endured.

_ For the Decepticon cause _ , Polarizer had said with an apologetic shrug. For the Decepticon cause Breakdown could tolerate just about anything, with dentae gritted.

“Careful. He may seize.” Polarizer glanced at the probe. “The cables should hold. On three--”

Breakdown braced himself, knowing his effort was wasted. Funny, how something so small could make him jump--

The probe fired, dazzling Breakdown’s optics. And--yes--his limbs clenched as one, as if crushed by a giant hand, and in midair he twisted like a dropped turbofox, his plating screeching over itself--

\-- _ Stunticons, combine to form Menasor-- _

\--and abruptly he relaxed.

“Weird,” muttered Breakdown. He’d been clenching his dentae again, his jaw aching already. Sooner or later they’d be ground down to the gums.

“Progress,” said Polarizer primly. He signaled to the nurse, who inclined his ( _ was _ it a he?) head and backed away. Breakdown craned his neck, trying to follow, but his shoulder blocked his view. So he dangled, helpless, feeling the nurse pop sensors free somewhere in the vicinity of his indicators, feeling something drip from the pipes above and sizzle on his back tire--

“I don’t even let my conjunx endura touch me like that.” Breakdown squirmed. “They have designations?”

Anything to make this normal--

The nurse paused. So did Polarizer. “I don’t know. They might. Stimulate his indicators--see if they both work.”

They both worked. The nurse reached into his hip seam, twisting a cable aside. Breakdown didn’t flinch--but it was a near thing.

“You’re conjuncted?” It was the first personal question Polarizer had asked him. For a klik Breakdown fumbled, sharply aware how stupid he must look, suspended in midair.

“I was.” It seemed the most honest. Around them the pipes creaked, leaking steam--no glistening Iaconian hospital, this.

“I’m sorry.”

The pipes rattled, the steam stinging Breakdown’s optics. Somewhere close by, a squad was passing, their footfalls thundering down the tunnels. Breakdown ached, for a second--

\--but one ache was much like another. “Let’s get this over with. Hook me up. Blow my mind.”

This time he did roar.

After an octex in Kaon, Knock Out had slipped into a staccato rhythm. His shifts were 32 joors on, 8 off. Twice a shift the Kaonian sun rose, bloated and poisonous through the rising smoke--

\-- _ they burned the sky _ \--

\--and, hustling from the Peace Wing trauma bay to Shockwave’s lab, Blitzwing’s gun at his back, Knock Out dawdled sometimes to watch. He’d never imagined a city so  _ ugly _ . The humid air tasted of burning fuel, of uranium. Fresh construction spilled at random through the streets, unpainted and brutal, already spattered with graffiti. In bombed-out rubble and dingy squares Decepticon squads patrolled as one mech--then, off-shift, they filled the morning with their tanked-up squabbles. Open-air smelting pools hurt the optic, so bright and hungry did they gleam in the sunrise.

And yet for vorns Breakdown had lived here,  _ thrived _ here.

Some solar cycles, Knock Out wondered if he’d ever really known Breakdown at all.

Medical Corps D-19 powered on as one, well before sunrise. “Almost like a real Decepticon squad,” Amput-8 had observed one morning. “This time next quartex we’ll all be on each other’s shoulders--”

Knock Out had laughed; Splint hadn’t.

So it was Amput-8 that Knock Out approached first, in the heady darkness. Neither of them had powered down that night. (Their circadian cycles were starting to slip away from a Cybertronian day, they’d concluded solar cycles before. Next came insomnia, fatigue, madness--) Knock Out pulled him aside, pressed a clawed finger to his vocal synthesizer. “Keep this close to the chassis, but what do you know about gestalts?”

Amput-8 caught his drift. “Almost nothing.” He lowered his head. “Which is pretty much what anyone knows, I’d guess. Supposed to be a component in Victory Wing’s rehab unit, but it’s all pretty hush-hush--I haven’t seen him--”

They were so often watched, and so rarely did they have a moment’s respite. Knock Out nodded, keeping his tone light, as all around them the bunk hustled to life. “I saved your rear when--”

Amput-8 cut him off. “I know. I’ll get you what I can. Might be nothing.” And then: “You had a friend in Kaon, didn’t you?” It was taut with meaning.

“You could say that.” They fell into line. “A pretty good friend.”

“We do have designations, Sergeant.” It was the same nurse who’d checked his indicators. He--

\--and Breakdown felt sure he was a he, though the cloned chassis was almost impossibly stark, bearing no signs of an alt-mode--

\--hung back, out of Breakdown’s reach. “Since, uh, you asked.”

“Thanks. Takes a load off my processor.” He meant it to sound sincere. Perhaps it did. 

Breakdown’s monitors beeped steadily, senselessly. He turned his faceplate away. Even this small effort exhausted him; a sickly tingle shot up his cables. Beneath the numb weight of his chestplate, his mesh ached, a dull steely pain that no anesthetic would touch.

“Sergeant Breakdown--”

“Breakdown is fine.”

“--I’m sorry. I’m moving around you now. You’re going to lose sight of me.” The nurse’s voice rose. As he approached he pinged Breakdown once, then twice; a serial number flashed up in Breakdown’s HUD, not a true designation. The third ping felt desperate. “I’m going to have to puncture your fuel line. This will hurt.”

With a dull ashamed rush Breakdown realized. “Hey. Easy. I’m not gonna hit you. Unless you  _ really _ mess me up.” And out of habit he felt his accent dropping a few caste rungs. “I ain’t Motormaster.”

The nurse’s hands were cool on his chest. “We all admire your squad, Sergeant. Menasor’s a hero to most of us.” How strange to hear that. “We were sorry to hear--”

“You and the rest of the army.” Breakdown vented hard as the needle went in. An effort, not to yell, not to thrash--but he’d had vorns of practice muting his yells, and the nurse was more afraid of Breakdown (afraid of  _ Breakdown _ !) than Breakdown of him. “Thanks. I’m sorry it happened.”

And he was, at that.

Weakly he chuckled. It hurt to laugh. “Menasor’s a hero, huh?”

“Menasor was  _ assembled _ .” It was, perhaps, too personal. The nurse’s engine whirred as he withdrew his hands. “In Kaon. You’re overheating a little, Sergeant. I’ll feed in some coolant.”

How odd, to be admired.

“ _ Breakdown _ isn’t my original designation.” His tone was casual. It could be nothing else. He was too exhausted for rage, for despair, even for curiosity. “Not a lotta people know that.”

“It’s--”

“Appropriate, yeah.” He cut the nurse off. “‘S what Drag Strip said. Used to be a serial number, though.” The coolant flooded in, and the pain faded by degrees. “ _ Breakdown’s _ better.” He waited, letting the silence grow. His monitors’ light flickered across the ceiling.

But perhaps it was inappropriate for a military-class--a  _ gestalt _ component and an officer--to know a clone’s designation. Perhaps the nurse still feared him.

“Try to recharge, Sergeant. You’ve got a long solar cycle ahead.”

He left, pinging again as he brushed past Breakdown’s shoulder. Breakdown stared, through half-shuttered optics, at nothing. “Scrap.”

They woke him later to drain his brake lines manually. He’d been replaying a memory of Knock Out--

His brake fluid, oily and black, reeking of soot and pollution, spattered into the collection bucket. The nurse reached inside him, pumping his lines. Around him more nurses crowded, chittering. Any one might’ve been the nurse he’d spoken to. A datapad was passed from hand to hand, tilted away out of his sight.

They were laughing, he thought, wildly--

“ _ I’mma crush you all into tinfoil _ \--”

“This  _ gestalt _ project.” Knock Out scrubbed in with a yawn. “We weren’t exactly building war machines at the old hospital. You’ll have to fill me in.”

He’d always been a quick study, when motivated. This shift’s patient he’d be handling solo. Across the medbay, Shockwave stood alone in a whirling tornado of holos: anatomical diagrams, wiring charts, some creature he didn’t recognize.

“Your primary interest is in your mate.” It was not quite a rebuke.

Nettled, Knock Out produced his buzzsaw. “Call me a maverick, but I like to know what I’m cutting open. I  _ hate _ surprises.”

Wildrider had been half-melted, his Spark pulsating through a honeycombed and soot-blackened mass that had been his chest. From a kilometer away Knock Out could smell him, all scorched oil and incinerated rubber. As the buzzsaw whirred to life, he twitched, a blast of static roaring from his synthesizer--

“Whoops,” said Knock Out, blinking. “Shockwave, we’ve got a live one.”

It was not quite a question.

“Proceed with the surgery,” droned Shockwave. Knock Out’s HUD blossomed to life with anatomical diagrams, three-dimensional scans of Wildrider’s wiring, videos of him in motion. He’d been a fine-looking specimen. All the Stunticons, Knock Out supposed, had been fine-looking.

“He’s not going to be--uh, traumatized?”

“His performance will not be impaired.” Shockwave bent low, scrutinizing something Knock Out couldn’t see. “His memory banks are largely inactivated.” 

“Oh, well, that’s a comfort.” Still he snipped Wildrider’s afferent fiber optics first. After a klik’s thought he injected a scrap of code to dial down nociception in his processor.  _ You’re welcome, wild thing _ . “Thanks for the instruction manuals. You say this was the first gestalt?”

_ Keep Shockwave talking, and hope he spills something useful _ .

“The third. Bruticus and Devastator were early successes. They are deployed presently.”

_ “ _ Bruticus. Devastator. Menasor.” Knock Out’s synthesizer hummed. “Awfully creative with the names, aren’t they?”

And then:

“Were they volunteers? Not that it makes a difference, really. I just  _ hate _ to cut up some poor conscript.”

“Your concern is--”

_ Illogical _ , Knock Out filled in, lifting Wildrider’s faceplate away.  _ You’ve staked our war effort on some build-a-bot science project and I’m the illogical one. _

A klik later, Wildrider’s faceplate still warm in his servos, he realized he’d thought  _ our war effort _ .

“--well-founded.”

“Quelle surprise.”

Shockwave continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “The  _ gestalt _ ’s behavior is an emergent product of neural synchronization. Unwilling components reduce total synchronization and introduce irregularities.”

_ Come again? _ said Breakdown in Knock Out’s memory. Knock Out cracked a grim smile. How close that memory was to the surface.

“You mean they were willing victims. My guilt is assuaged.” He picked up a file. “Can’t understand why someone would sign up for that. But then, people do crazy things, don’t they, Shockwave?” Wildrider’s processor sparked, erratic blue light arcing over its surface. Again Knock Out felt a pang of--

\--aesthetic distaste, he told himself. Cutting out a functioning processor wasn’t  _ done _ in Vos, hadn’t been  _ done _ before the war.

( _ Yes, it was, _ whispered another voice.  _ You just didn’t bother to see it _ .)

“Electric-blue paint jobs. Living in Kaon. Signing up for experimental surgeries. Sure. Why not.”

“It behooves a physician to understand psychology,” droned Shockwave.

_ Look who’s talking, Mr. Monotone _ . Knock Out bristled, his file slipping.  _ Whoops. Hope Wildrider didn’t need that. _

He’d have been horrified by his flippancy, before the war--

(-- _ but no _ , he wouldn’t have been, not really. Unbidden, his memory banks pulled up replays: a younger Knock Out cracking jokes about the size of a cadaver’s tailpipe; Knock Out mimicking a patient’s stuttering vocal synthesizer and unwieldy aft in the physicians’ lounge; Knock Out striking a pose during surgery, arm-deep in a Vosian dignitary--)

With renewed drive he dug into Wildrider’s brainpan. “If you’re going to turn this over to me, Shockwave, I’ll need more than a drip-feed of information and Wildrider’s tech specs. I need to know what you’re doing.”

“Yes. That is logical.” Shockwave did not look up from his holoscreens. Knock Out squinted, zooming in on the nearest.  _ Dynobot _ , he caught, and  _ atavist project _ \--words that could have meant anything. For a klik Knock Out regretted not following war journalism. “You will also need to work faster. You are still preoccupied. Trying to get information on the Stunticon unit. Asking questions in your barracks.”

Knock Out laughed weakly. “You knew.”

“You are always monitored, Knock Out. No transmission in Kaon is private.” It was not exactly a rebuke. Shockwave spoke as if merely correcting a student.

Still Knock Out bristled. His main vents were sealed, to protect Wildrider’s wiring; so the heat built up inside him, roiling in his chest. “Any chance you’re going to fill me in? Curiosity killed the cybercat, you know. Or at least seriously slowed down his work, if that’s what you care about.”

Shockwave cocked his head, seeming for a second to consider it. The flurry of beeps and whirrs from his holoscreens did not slow; Knock Out’s processor was beginning to ache. Then Shockwave gestured, and a data dump appeared on Knock Out’s HUD.

“You will not share this information. You are responsible for internalizing it and for continuing in your appointed duties.”

For a klik Knock Out wondered if Shockwave had allowed him to speak to Amput-8, to prove that Decepticon surveillance was absolute.  _ One point to the military-industrial complex. Zero points to Knock Out _ .

“Remember that you can be replaced,” continued Shockwave. “There is no shortage of self-aggrandizing physicians.” He gave Knock Out no time to react. “If  _ curiosity _ is distracting you, this should suffice. If your concern is for your mate--”

Knock Out stilled his faceplate. Hoped fiercely that Shockwave was no psychologist.  _ The hostage’s behavior is the emergent product of frustration, sleep deprivation, moral qualms, and concern for his certainly-maimed, possibly-dying conjunx endura. Oh, and having smoke blown up his tailpipe. _

“Not really.”

“--you will see him when the rest of the army does. At present it was deemed--illogical. His condition is fragile.”

Knock Out’s engine sped up. He forced it down a gear, feeling condensation building up in his chest.

His file squeaked, suddenly grotesquely loud, in Wildrider’s brainpan.

_ Let’s see who’s the psychologist, Shockwave. _

“Breakdown is more than my partner, Shockwave.” His tone was measured. “He’s the only window I have into this process. If Devastator and Bruticus are in the field, and the rest of the Stunticons are a couple tons of slag each--”

“No.”

Knock Out’s file slipped again, carving a white gouge down Wildrider’s bubbled paint. “I need to know what I’m  _ working with _ .”

“There is another survivor. To whom you have no sentimental attachment.” Shockwave glanced over, his red eye fixed, cold as the muzzle of a gun. “You will sacrifice some of your recharge time. You are already off-cycle. Your judgment may be impaired.”

Knock Out’s servos squeaked as his fingers curled around the file. “Moi? Cool as a circuit board.” And then, strained with the effort of keeping his voice flippant: “And whatever happened to him--that’s what happened to the rest of them?”

Shockwave looked away again, tapped something into the closest terminal. “Finish removing the processor. You are expected back at the rehabilitation bay as soon as you are done.”

“ _ Schneller, _ Blitzwing--”

He had three breems before the patient’s nursing shift changed. He’d not stopped to collect the patient’s file, to grab a set of diagnostic tools, for anything--

His brainpan roared with curses: Shockwave for outmaneuvering him; Blitzwing, and all Cybertronians, for their maddening slowness, of thought and action; Breakdown, for  _ volunteering _ , for getting himself half-slagged, for what seemed an endless string of decisions Knock Out could not, would not comprehend--

He wondered, striding down the reeking tunnel to the Victory Wing rehabilitation unit, brushing past broad-shouldered clone infantry and Seeker captains with wings held high, if he’d ever known Breakdown at all.

_ Dead End’s Energon mingled with Breakdown’s--Dead End was poisoned-- _

_ The Stunticons shared a body-- _

_ The gestalt’s behavior is an emergent property of the component personalities-- _

For a sickening klik, he wondered if the Stunticons had known Breakdown better than he had.

He reached the room, half-running now, Blitzwing trailing well behind him. The guards, two lanky Kaonians, regarded him with smooth confusion.

“Dr. Knock Out of Medical Unit D-19. Special assignment for Shockwave. I’m here to see Corporal Drag Strip.”


End file.
